The present invention relates generally to plastic fasteners and more particularly to a plastic fastener which, once attached to a desired item, cannot easily be removed therefrom intact.
Plastic fasteners are well known and widely used in the retail industry, e.g., to attach tags to articles of clothing. Typically, such fasteners comprise an elongated plastic member having a first end shaped to define a cross bar (also commonly referred to as a "T bar"), a second end shaped to define a paddle, and a thin filament portion interconnecting the cross bar and the paddle. The cross bar typically has a length of 0.25 inch or greater and is otherwise dimensioned for insertion first through a tag and then through a desired article. The paddle is appropriately dimensioned to keep a tag from being pulled off the second end of the fastener. Typically, such fasteners are mass produced by a molding process in either one of two different forms known as fastener stock. One type of fastener stock, which is shown in commonly assigned U.S. Pat. No. 3,103,666 and incorporated hereinto by reference, comprises a plurality of fasteners joined together at their respective cross bars by an orthogonally disposed runner bar. The other type of fastener stock, which is shown in commonly assigned U.S. Pat. No. 4,955,475 and incorporated hereinto by reference, comprises a plurality of fasteners arranged in an end to end alignment, the heads and opposite ends of successive fasteners being joined together by severable connectors so as to form a continuously connected fastener stock.
Typically, the cross bar portion of a single fastener is separated from a quantity of fastener stock and then inserted first through a tag and then through a sheet of material with a hand held apparatus commonly referred to as a tagging gun. (Connections, if any, between the paddles of a pair of adjacent fasteners are severed by pulling the tagging gun away from the piece of fabric after the cross bar of one of the fasteners has been inserted thereinto.) Examples of tagging guns are illustrated in commonly assigned U.S. Pat. Nos. 5,024,365, 4,121,487, and 4,456,161, all of which are incorporated hereinto by reference.
While plastic fasteners of the type described above function reasonably well to attach tags to clothing and the like, it is nonetheless known that certain unscrupulous consumers make it a practice to remove such fasteners intact from their respective items, only to later re attach the fasteners either to the same or to different items. One such practice of the type described above is commonly referred to as "ticket switching" and typically involves removing the fastener and tag from a low priced item and re attaching them to a high priced item. As can readily be appreciated, to remove and re attach the fastener to the high priced item, the fastener must be removed intact from the low priced item. Typically, such removal of the fastener is accomplished first by manipulating the cross bar so that one of its ends is aligned with the installation hole, i.e., the opening in the sheet of material through which the cross bar and filament were originally inserted, and then by pushing the cross bar and the filament back through the installation hole.